HP and Acer are looking at Chromebooks instead of Windows 8 due to disappointing sales

Acer says that their Chromebook sales are doing well and HP is about to launch their first ever Chromebook this month. The relation of these two stories? Disappointing and dropping Windows 8 sales.

Acer President Jim Wong tells Bloomberg, “Windows 8 itself is still not successful, the whole market didn’t come back to growth after the Windows 8 launch; that’s a simple way to judge if it is successful or not.” Since being released in November of 2012, Chromebooks have accounted for 5 to 10 percent of Acer’s US shipments. This has caused the company to look at new strategies, like focusing on marketing more laptops that run Google’s Chrome OS instead of the traditional PC with Windows.

According to a report by The Verge, HP’s upcoming Pavilion Chromebook will have “a 1.1GHz Intel Celeron processor, 2GB of RAM, a 16GB solid-state drive, and a 14-inch, 1366 by 768 display.” HP is not commenting on the device just yet, but the report mentions an ‘ad embargo date’ of Feb. 17, so we should be hearing about the first Chromebook from HP in the coming weeks. Principal Analyst of Pund-IT, Charles King, believes that Chromebooks can be profitable for these two companies:

“Vendors go where the money is. You’ve got to be able to make a profit. We’re seeing it here at Acer and HP. Microsoft’s unassailable position on the desktop may not be as unassailable anymore. Here, these comps are exploring [alternatives] and then seeing if there is enough demand for it to make the business work.”

It’s true Windows 8 sales have been slumping, but eWEEK notes that Chromebook sales haven’t been that huge in numbers either. Maybe they’ll need to offer a good balance of both to stay profitable, but only time will tell. One thing’s for sure — the computer landscape is definitely changing, and it’s changing fast.

4 comments

cableuserau

Why MS didn’t release two versions of Win8 I don’t know. The current offering may be okay for tablets etc. but for a desktop? Hey, MS for quite a while now offered MANY versions of the same OS and now they expect people to use a tablet designed OS on their desktop? If only I had enough money to make a complete stuff-up like that and still be solvent!